NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has sent new images confirming that it has successfully obtained the first sample from the interior of a rock on another planet beyond Earth.
For the first time, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has received photos showing the transfer of the powdered rock sample into an open scoop.
"Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time the drill collected a sample as it bore into the rock," JPL's Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer for Curiosity, said in a statement. "Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown."
On Feb. 8, the drill on the Curiosity's robotic arm bored a 2.5-inch (6.4-centimeter) hole into a flat, veiny rock called "John Klein" in memory of the former Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager John W. Klein, who died in 2011.
The drill collected the first powdered sample from the rock's interior and transferred it into a scoop that will be enclosed inside Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device. The sample will be sieved so as to identify particles that are larger than 0.006 inch (150 microns) across.
Small portions of the sieved sample will be sent through inlet ports on top of the rover deck into the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. The CheMin instrument and the SAM instrument will carry out a detailed analysis of the powder to find out clues about conditions under which the rock formed. The rock is believed to hold evidence about long-gone wet environments.
Curiosity is on a two-year mission to determine if an area within Mars' Gale Crater, on which the rover landed last August, has ever offered favorable environmental conditions for microbial life.